The latest advances in television technology are being tested in some unlikely places.

Beverley is a small English town, not far from the port of Hull.

Neuruppin, a town full of sterile shopping centres, lies an hour's drive from Berlin in the former East Germany.

Basildon, a 20-year-old industrial town 35 miles from London, is best known for its Ford tractor factory.

None of these places has much to offer in the way of recreational facilities. To wile away the hours, many inhabitants seek out the local video store, where they can rent a copy of the latest Hollywood blockbuster to watch at home. It was thus decided that Beverley, Neuruppin and Basildon would be ideal locations for video-on-demand (VOD) pilot projects.

Experts have long toyed with the idea of the cyber-video, which would enable films to be downloaded at any time of the day or night with a touch of a button on the remote control. This dream is gradually becoming a reality. Kingston Interactive Television (KIT) offers VOD to a test group in Beverley via the telephone line. In Neuruppin a pilot project is being conducted by MediaNetcom in collaboration with the local cable TV provider. And in the Basildon region, Telewest, another cable TV provider, offers VOD to some 27,000 households, making it the largest field test of its type in the world.

Subscribers

Michael and Michelle Kitchen live in Beverley and are among the 1,500 households subscribing to the new multimedia service from KIT, including its digital video store. The films available for the time being are not exactly hot from the box-office, with viewers having to make do with hardy perennials such as Dressed to Kill or The African Queen. The Kitchens' 11-year-son Tom is nevertheless enthusiastic about the new service and has already downloaded a number of oldies. He quickly demonstrates how easy the system is to operate. Mrs Kitchen would like to be able to see more recent Hollywood hits, but is delighted with the documentaries on offer. As an animal-lover - she has a tame falcon - she is more than willing to pay up to £1 for programs about birds of prey.

At present the download procedure itself is free of charge, but this is likely to change. Once multimedia households in Europe become widespread, VOD could turn into a highly lucrative business. Unlike other new interactive applications, which require a certain lead time before they are accepted by TV viewers, the known market for a well-stocked cyber-video store already exists. At present, for example, 115m EU households with VCRs spend $2.3bn (£1.5bn) annually on rented videos, 50 per cent more than the revenue earned by cinemas. In the US, the video market is worth $9.6bn, about three times as much as the cinema market. Even in Japan, where only 39m households possess a VCR, the $3.1bn video market is larger than Europe's. This means that the European market still has plenty of room for growth. Industry experts are confident that cyber-video stores will one day overtake their rivals - the tens of thousands of musty video stores on Europe's high streets.

The advantages of cyber-video stores are obvious: no closing times; no frustration because the films you want are not in; no problems of space. VOD is also much more convenient. "I rarely go to the video store, although it's only 10 minutes away," says Mrs Kitchen. "I'm too lazy."This character trait has made her a devoted VOD fan, and there is no reason why there shouldn't be millions of other potential digital home video users.

For a long time, however, it looked as if this potential would remain at the development stage. The world's first VOD pilot project was launched in 1994 in Flor